Israeli again accuses U.S. of swaying U.N.
Protesting vote, Netanyahu summons ambassadors from Security Council members
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday reiterated his belief that the U.S. had an active role in the U.N. Security Council’s adoption of a resolution opposing Jewish settlements in occupied territory in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
“From the information that we have, we have no doubt that the Obama administration initiated it, stood behind it, coordinated on the wording and demanded that it be passed,” Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday.
Resolution 2334 passed Friday by a 14-0 vote with the United States abstaining.
The resolution marked a sharp international rebuke of Israeli settlement policies in the West Bank and east Jerusalem — territories captured in the 1967 Mideast war and claimed by the Palestinians as parts of a future independent state. About 600,000 Israelis now live in the two areas, complicating any partition of the land between Israel and a future Palestine.
Netanyahu routinely dismisses international criticism of the settlements, saying that the dispute with the Palestinians goes back to long before the 1967 war.
He also notes that when Israel dismantled its Gaza settlements in 2005, Hamas militants responded by firing rockets and subsequently seizing control of the territory from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Friday’s resolution said the settlements have “no legal validity” and constitute a
“flagrant violation” of international law. It also urged all states to distinguish between Israel and “the territories occupied since 1967.”
The resolution is largely symbolic; it did not include talk of sanctions or any other punitive measures against Israel.
Netanyahu has gone on a campaign to punish the countries that took part in Friday’s resolution. He has canceled several diplomatic visits and on Sunday summoned ambassadors from Security Council countries, including Dan Shapiro of the U.S., in protest.
The summons were part of a series of diplomatic measures announced by Netanyahu, who is also Israel’s foreign minister, since the resolution was adopted.
Israeli media reported Sunday that Netanyahu had instructed members of his Cabinet to refrain from traveling to countries that voted for the resolution and that he had canceled a meeting scheduled with British Prime Minister Theresa May.
After the U.N. vote, Netanyahu recalled Israel’s ambassadors to New Zealand and Senegal, and he canceled scheduled trips to Israel by the Senegalese foreign minister and Ukraine’s prime minister. He also said Israeli aid to Senegal would be canceled and contributions Israel makes to five U.N. agencies would be halted.
“I share my ministers’ feelings of anger and frustration vis-a-vis the unbalanced resolution,” Netanyahu said Sunday at his weekly Cabinet meeting.
Riad Malki, the Palestinian foreign minister, said Netanyahu was being disingenuous by calling the resolution anti-Israel.
“This resolution is about settlement activities, the twostate solution and ending the occupation,” he said. “Netanyahu, by his statements and his actions, is isolating Israel for the sake of settlements.”
Malki said the Palestinians hoped the resolution would bolster their case at the International Criminal Court, which has begun a preliminary investigation into the settlements. He also said he hoped that it would encourage European countries to follow up on a European Union recommendation to clearly label products manufactured in settlements, and encourage other countries to do the same.
On Jan. 15, days before Obama leaves office, France is expected to host a Mideast conference where dozens of countries may endorse an international framework for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Netanyahu vehemently opposes such activity, saying it undermines the negotiating process.
TRUMP’S ROLE
Netanyahu is placing his hopes in the incoming administration of Donald Trump.
In a departure from past policy of presidents-elect waiting on the sidelines, Trump tried to scuttle the resolution and called for a U.S. veto. After the vote, Trump vowed that “things will be different after Jan. 20th.”
“The big loss yesterday for Israel in the United Nations will make it much harder to negotiate peace. Too bad, but we will get it done anyway!” Trump told his 17.9 million Twitter followers Saturday.
President Barack Obama has been critical of Israel’s West Bank settlements from the moment he entered office, demanding a construction freeze as a precondition for peace talks with the Palestinians. He and Netanyahu then clashed publicly over the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, with Netanyahu denouncing it in a speech to Congress that wasn’t coordinated with the White House and that soured relations further.
It remains unclear what Trump might be able to do. While he will be able to wield the U.S. veto to prevent further action against Israel in the council, he would still
have to persuade other nations in the Security Council to overturn Friday’s decision.
Trump has appointed an outspoken supporter and donor to the settlements, his longtime attorney, David Friedman, as ambassador to Israel. And aides say Trump is serious about a promise to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which even many Israelis fear could spark violence. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem, home to sensitive religious sites, as the capital of the future state to which they aspire.
After Friday’s vote, Netanyahu’s office said he looked forward to working with Trump “to negate the harmful effects of this absurd resolution.”
Alon Pinkas, a former diplomat and adviser to various Israeli prime ministers, said Netanyahu’s “self-righteousness that this resolution is going to be changed or reversed by Trump is totally unfounded; if he really thinks this can happen then either he is panicking or plainly misleading.”
Pinkas said that while the resolution was unlikely to have any immediate consequences, in the long term it could set an international precedent on Israel and its settlements.
The basis for the resolution is found in the Geneva Conventions, which forbid the settling of areas captured in war from another country. Israel has said the law doesn’t apply because the territory was captured from Jordan, which has renounced all claims to the land. Israel has also defended the occupation on religious and security grounds.
When Netanyahu’s rivals in Israel oppose the settlements, it is not necessarily because of a conviction that peace could be at hand, but rather for concern for Israel’s democracy. If Israel becomes inseparable from the West Bank, it will have to grant its 2.5 million Palestinians voting rights, or increasingly be unable to call itself a democracy.
The country is divided on the issue, and key sectors of society, including intellectual elites and much of its security establishment, want to see settlements end. Many of them welcome — some openly, and many more quietly — any world pressure to bring that about.
The domestic fallout of the vote was unclear. Education Minister Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home party, which opposes a Palestinian state, said Israel should annex portions of the West Bank in response.
A contentious initiative to authorize West Bank outposts — postponed until after Trump takes office next month — could be revived after the U.N. move, the Times of Israel reported. The bill would legalize some 4,000 housing units in the West Bank.
Dan Miodownik, a professor of political science and international relations at Hebrew University, said there were actually some positive elements for Israel in the resolution.
He said the resolution endorsed the idea of territorial swaps, meaning that Israel could keep some settlements as part of a negotiated peace deal. And the differentiation between Israel proper and the settlements signaled that unlike in the past, Israel was no longer being forced to defend its right to exist.
Information for this article was contributed by Josef Federman of The Associated Press; Ruth Eglash of The Washington Post; Isabel Kershner of The New York Times; and Michael S. Arnold, Jonathan Ferziger and Gwen Ackerman of Bloomberg News.
Israeli media reported Sunday that Netanyahu had instructed members of his Cabinet to refrain from traveling to countries that voted for the resolution and that he had canceled a meeting scheduled with British Prime Minister Theresa May.